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Old 08-15-2007, 09:40 PM   #41
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I actually did the first part of wrapping the cat5 cable around the phone and plugging in the Ethernet port. It increased the signal strength when you plugged it in. I'm in a remote area so not sure if it increased range of finding signals. Would make it really difficult if the phone rang and you needed to answer it.

Nice to know Mike that if I can't find the salad bowl I can use the scoop or wok. I can just picture all of us at a rally with Gina's tin foil helmets on and pringle cantenna's.
It seems like all we use to care about was whether they cleaned the loo regularly.

I can report that the PDANet worked extremely well with my Treo at San Elijo on our last trip, so since I own that now it is free and unlimited Internet access.

The guys at radiolabs sent me this recommendation since I only need to hook up one laptop for hitting the RVPark Wifi.

Laptop Wifi

Now where did she hide that salad bowl....
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Old 08-15-2007, 09:50 PM   #42
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I think this is their strongest USB
http://www.radiolabs.com/products/wireless...c12508917679062
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Old 08-15-2007, 09:54 PM   #43
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He sent me that one too, Mike, but not sure what or where I'd mount it.
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Old 08-15-2007, 09:57 PM   #44
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He sent me that one too, Mike, but not sure what or where I'd mount it.
That is the one I was going to get, however I couldn’t get both our computers on at the same time.
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Old 08-29-2007, 04:57 PM   #45
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Well I just received the new Wifi USB and Antenna from Radiolabs.
WaveRVII

I can only see my hub and one other from my office in my house. I hooked this baby up and I can now see about 6-8 that encompass our whole neighborhood. Too early to tell for sure, but the results look terrific so far. I'll let you know more as I test it around town and campground. Thanks Mike for putting me on to these guys as it looks like they know what they're doing.
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Old 08-30-2007, 12:33 PM   #46
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First results update.

I work at the Library near my house a couple of days a week and they have free wifi.
They have four hubs and only one in the past is usually at 4-5 bars and speed lags somewhat.

Today with the new device all four hubs are at 5 bars and signal strength is awesome. I can now see about 20 wifi hubs in the list. The best thing is that I logon to my desktop system back at the office through "remote desktop." The speed up here at the library is usually a bit problematic. Today it is like sitting back at the office working directly on my office desktop. No speed degradation!!! From reading up on long range wifi I think they have put a combination together of an excellent duckie antenna and 1Watt of power on the USB wifi device. Most wifi cards are somewhere around 250mw if I recall correctly.

Next I will be testing in the campgrounds this fall, but the early results are, in terms of my working out and around the community, this device is worth every penny......
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Old 08-30-2007, 12:59 PM   #47
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Thanks for the report. Sounds great.
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Old 08-31-2007, 05:13 PM   #48
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From reading up on long range wifi I think they have put a combination together of an excellent duckie antenna and 1Watt of power on the USB wifi device. Most wifi cards are somewhere around 250mw if I recall correctly.
The link posted previously to the WaveRV II shows:

Automatic gain control to minimize the signal distortion on all access points
* High Power transmit level, 200mW (23dBm)
*
5-Volt power supplied via USB PC connector
*
Industry standard USB connector. Works with USB 1.0 & 2.0
* 9 5/8" antenna length/wireless card combination
* 4' USB cable included
* Software CD included

I'm not sure, but I don't think 1 Watt is legal without a license, and perhaps not even then.

I have an older SMC 2532 802.11b card with the following specs (same output as above):

TRANSMIT OUTPUT POWER (E.I.R.P.)
•23 dBm @ 11 Mbps
RECEIVE SENSITIVITY
• IEEE802.11b
Transfer Rate IEEE802.11b
1 Mbps -94 dBm
2 Mbps -93 dBm
5.5 Mbps -91 dBm
11 Mbps -89 dBm

And an external antenna connector.

Plus,

I have a Hawking 54G USB adapter with a 6dBi directional antenna but no specs. It performs better than the SMC, but that may only be because the antenna is directional.

The SMC card cost me about $65, plus $15 for an omnidirectional antenna and the Hawking was about $60.

I pick up LOTS more stuf with the SMC or the Hawking than I do with my internal (Ralink) card.
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Old 09-05-2007, 11:40 PM   #49
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Good points Pete.

The differentiation for me lies in determining the use. I work on the road when we are traveling so I need to find a high-end solution to the wifi/internet issue without shelling out 2k for a sat system or $60 a month for a marginal evdo card.

If I were going to just need to do email and/or surf the internet, my Treo phone solution for free works fine, however, it is not a robust enough solution to put in 6-10 hour work day. I have several PC wifi cards that I purchased at retail stores with very similar stats to the above, but in practice they don't work well when pushed.

When researching "extended range wifi" the card names that are consistently used are, Senao and Proxima coupled with high gain antenna's. Radiolabs also seems to have an excellent reputation in "extended wifi" products. When you get into that class of products they are indeed much more expensive. The difference being that regardless of whatever the specs are, the system should locate a strong signal within a 1/2 mile to a mile and perform for 4+ hours without dropping signals or fluctuating wildly on signal strength. Extended range solutions will also have the capability to make major adjustments to the wifi card performance within the software, which usually aren't available on consumer gear found at local retailers.

So far, Mike who also needs a high end solution and myself have had excellent test results with our purchases as noted above. The real test will be when we get in the "trees" and need to work uninterrupted for the day.
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Old 09-07-2007, 04:59 PM   #50
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Some thing I just saw on TV

http://www.intel.com/netcomms/techno...imax/index.htm
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Old 09-27-2007, 12:09 AM   #51
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So, reading Mike's original desire in setting up two computers to a wifi hot spot, we embarked on the same venture. We got a Buffalo wireless G MIMO ethernet converter, a Hawking 9 dbi omnidirectional antenna and a 30' cable antenna.

After a lot of configuration problems, the system finally works!

We can configure the converter to act as a wifi bridge, and then use its LAN ports to plug in our laptops. Have to use the hard wire connections -- we haven't been able to do that wirelessly, and the cryptic instructions imply that too.

If anyone's interested, here's the procedure: 1) plug in the converter and press the init button on the bottom. 2) Unplug it, attach the LAN cable which is provided to the enabling computer and to one of the LAN ports on the converter. 3) Make sure you are within range of a wifi hotspot that you know the encryption code, or better, one that is unsequered. 4) Plug in the power cord to the converter. It should have a red bootup light for a few seconds, and then there should be two green lights. 5) Open your control panel in the computer and go to network settings. You should see the LAN connected. Double click the LAN connection and go to ip settings and then properties. Change from automatic settings to manual settings. Put 1.1.1.2, or 1.1.1.3 in the ip line. Put 255.255.255.0 in the subnet field. Close the settings to save them. 6) Open your web browser (it will show page can't be found). Type in 1.1.1.1 in the browser field. You should get a box that asks for a name and password. Type "root" without the quotes in the name field; leave the password blank. You should get a buffalo configuration page. 7) Go to the search button. It will bring up a list of wifi hot spots it sees. Picking one with encryption is beyond my experimentation, but any that are not encrypted can be chosen for experimentation. In our house, we can only see our own connection using Comcast and a Linksys router. If we take the little antenna off the converter and put on the new high gain antenna, we can see a lot of hot spots around the neighborhood. Pick the one you want to use and save the settings. The page will reboot, and fill in the upper section with the hot spot you chose in the SSID section. Close this section. 8) Critical: Go back to the internet settings and change the ip back to automatic confituration, and save. After all this, you should be able to open the web for normal browsing.

I wish they said this stuff in the converter manual. I suppose in retrospect, they sort of did, but it took us 4 days to figure it out and get it working.

The only thing I wish I had done, and I may try to trade it back for another one, is the 9dbi antenna. We should have got a 15 dbi unit. More on this later.

Thanks for listening.
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Old 09-27-2007, 12:18 AM   #52
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Thank Lance; I learned something.
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Old 09-29-2007, 04:17 PM   #53
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The only thing I wish I had done, and I may try to trade it back for another one, is the 9dbi antenna. We should have got a 15 dbi unit.
Bear in mind that the higher power of the 15 dBi is derived by increasing its directionality, so it will have to be aimed more carefully than the omnidirectional antenna and will likely reject anything to the sides (or rear, depending on the construction). It will likely require more fiddling to find a connection and may be blocked if someone in a BulgeMobile parks nearby.

I am reading, BTW, that lots of RVers in the parks share their satellite connections.
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Old 09-29-2007, 06:03 PM   #54
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Bear in mind that the higher power of the 15 dBi is derived by increasing its directionality, so it will have to be aimed more carefully than the omnidirectional antenna and will likely reject anything to the sides (or rear, depending on the construction). It will likely require more fiddling to find a connection and may be blocked if someone in a BulgeMobile parks nearby.

I am reading, BTW, that lots of RVers in the parks share their satellite connections.
Pete,

They have Omni-Directional 15 db antennas. Actually they have four levels of Omni-Directional antennas.

The RadioLabs 8 dB omni-directional WiFi antenna - Price: $79.95
http://www.radiolabs.com/products/antennas...gig/8dbomni.php

The RadioLabs 11.8 dB omni-directional WiFi antenna - Price: $99.95
http://www.radiolabs.com/products/antennas...ig/11dbomni.php

The RadioLabs 12 dB omni-directional WiFi antenna - Price: $119.95
http://www.radiolabs.com/products/antennas...ork-antenna.php

The 15 dB Omni is a professional grade WiFi antenna - Price: $169.95
http://www.radiolabs.com/products/antennas...ifi-antenna.php
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Old 09-30-2007, 06:23 PM   #55
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I read what they say, and I'm not an antenna expert, but that kind of unamplified gain from an omni-directional antenna just seems way out of the ball park. That's 32 times improvement in signal strength over a spherical radiator... However, I did see another manf's claim for 19 dBi on a patch antenna (more directional, however), so maybe it's possible.
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Old 09-30-2007, 07:25 PM   #56
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I read what they say, and I'm not an antenna expert, but that kind of unamplified gain from an omni-directional antenna just seems way out of the ball park. That's 32 times improvement in signal strength over a spherical radiator... However, I did see another manf's claim for 19 dBi on a patch antenna (more directional, however), so maybe it's possible.
Take manufacturers claims about gain with a grain of salt... I've heard it mentioned elsewhere that 'Snake Oil Salesmen didn't become extinct, they just started selling antennas'.

It's funny, but in a field as precise as electronics, there is really not a set standard benchmark of reference used to determine the efficiency of a antenna, short of gain relative to a tuned dipole antenna. Antenna Manufacturers love to "massage" the numbers to their advantage and often make claims based on other than "standard" references.

I still think making a directional, high-gain wifi antenna out of a Pringles Can is cool.


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Old 10-17-2007, 11:38 PM   #57
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Just catching up with the forums.

Pete -- what I did was return the 9 dbi omnidirectional antenna and ordered the 15 dbi omnidirectional from Radio Labs. Have been experimenting with placement, height and trying to avoid obstructions. Where I am right now, the setup increases the connection speed a lot. Through the Buffalo software, I see many more hot spots, and their strength is dramatically increased. Like from one or two bars to 4 and five bars.

The reason we went with this setup, is that it allows more than one computer to be hooked up to one spot, which is nice in situations where we can use the antenna to get a stronger signal.

The 15 db antenna is a lot bigger than I expected -- nearly 4 feet tall, and requiring a sturdy pole for mounting. I'm hooking it to a tall adjustable paint roller pole, and then using bungee cords to steady it. Seems to be working ok. Claims to have a 1.5 mile range, but I haven't seen anything close to that yet, unless it has a totally clear line of site (no obstructions).

So is it worth it? Marginally so far, but it might find a permanent placement at our winter home.
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Old 10-19-2007, 10:24 AM   #58
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perhaps a christmas present for the man who has everything?
wifi detector shirt:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/generic/9...g=cj&cpg=cj
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Old 10-19-2007, 10:28 AM   #59
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perhaps a christmas present for the man who has everything?
wifi detector shirt:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/generic/9...g=cj&cpg=cj
OH WOW! I don't have wifi on any of my toys and I still want this shirt!

(Remind me again why I'm still single...?)
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Old 10-19-2007, 11:03 AM   #60
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OH WOW! I don't have wifi on any of my toys and I still want this shirt!

(Remind me again why I'm still single...?)
I want it, too!

Don't you have dogs? Mine always buy me nice Christmas presents.

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